The Twilight Zone Reboot: 10 Classic Episodes It Should Remake

The Story:

A couple are woken up by noises of construction work and go downstairs to discover faceless blue men, dressed all in blue and with blue tools, removing all of their furniture and rebuilding their whole surroundings. After trying and failing to escape, they discover the truth: time is a literal construction, every minute is a wholly separate universe, built and then torn down by the blue men. Having accidentally stumbled into the construction of 9:33 am, the couple are now forbidden from leaving it.

Why Remake It?

Ask people who have seen the 1980s series what they remember from it and this image of what essentially amounts to the Blue Man Group as a construction team is likely to come up. The imagery, and its accompanying time construction conceit, is interesting and memorable, but the original story doesn't really take it any further. After around ten minutes of exposition, there is a brief chase and the couple escape.

Expanded up to a full hour-long episode, however, there would be the potential actually to play with the time-building idea and tell a full story. I'm imagining something in the vein of a Charlie Kaufman-Spike Jonze slice of offbeat magical realist whimsy turned dark and sinister.

And, as for updating it, well, A Matter Of Minutes was already based on Theodore Sturgeon's short story Yesterday Was Monday, which was originally published in 1941, so it's not like it wasn't already subject to a bit of a contemporary rewrite to appear on TV in the 80s anyway.